Internal combustion engines, including diesel engines, gasoline engines, gaseous fuel-powered engines, and other engines known in the art exhaust a complex mixture of air pollutants. These air pollutants are composed of gaseous compounds including, among other things, the oxides of nitrogen (NOX). Due to increased awareness of the environment, exhaust emission standards have become more stringent, and the amount of NOX emitted to the atmosphere by an engine may be regulated depending on the type of engine, size of engine, and/or class of engine.
In order to comply with the regulation of NOX, some engine manufacturers have implemented a strategy called selective catalytic reduction (SCR). SCR is an exhaust treatment process where a reductant, most commonly urea ((NH2)2CO) or a water/urea solution, is selectively injected into the exhaust gas stream of an engine and adsorbed onto a downstream substrate. The injected urea solution decomposes into ammonia (NH3), which reacts with NOX in the exhaust gas to form water (H2O) and diatomic nitrogen (N2).
Depending on the application, some reductant dosing systems can include many different components fluidly interconnected by way of multiple reductant supply and return lines, pressurized air lines, and electrical communication lines. For example, a reductant dosing system can include a working tank of reductant, a supply tank of reductant, a reductant pump, a reductant injector, a supply of pressurized air, heaters, control valves, pressure regulators, pressure sensors, temperature sensors, fluid level meters, etc. Each of these components can require a dedicated mounting location, fluid connection to appropriate passages of the system, and electrical connections to a dosing controller. Because every engine system can have a different configuration, custom engineering is often required to appropriately package each dosing system component and route the required reductant, air, power, and communication lines. This custom engineering can be very expensive and time consuming.
The reductant dosing manifold of the present disclosure addresses one or more of the needs set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.